Sunday, April 05, 2009

Hating the player, and not grokking the game.

Henry Porter, a Limey columnist with that Moody Loner look that suggests he's only a pair of sunglasses and a hoodie away from typing manifestos in a tar paper shack, feels that the benevolent governments of the world should, while they're binding the mouths of the financial industry kine, look into regulating that soul-destroying internet thing too.

People's Enemy Number One in Porter's eyes is, ironically, the "Don't Be Evil" company itself, Google.

Now, personally, I'm no huge fan or detractor of the company, finding them no eviller or gooder than most other tech firms, but the thing that gave me the gasping giggles was his portrayal of Google as some eternal, thuggish, robber-baron monopoly that has taken over the internet, rather than simply the current top dog until someone comes along with a better mousetrap. I mean, wasn't it just a few years ago that sclerotic industry giant Microsoft owned the intertubes because they bundled Explorer with Windows? Now less than a third of VFTP readers browse this page with Microsoft's browser while over half use some version or another of Firefox. In an industry where empires rise and fall in less time than it takes to earn a Bachelor's in Computer Science, panicky cries of "Monopoly!" always strike me as a little, well, clueless.

Why do people use google? Because they want to. There are enough alternatives that it isn't like their tastefully restrained logo art is being shoved down our throats at gunpoint. (Unlike a certain stimulus package...)

I use Google for a lot of things (online document storage, blogging, e-mail ... ), but like you said -- it's only until something better comes along. In the meantime, it's free, and there *are* alternatives. People who think that's a monopoly probably have larger control issues that affect more than just their view of the Internet.

Nail on the head and then some. When I started my CS degree everyone wanted a job at Microsoft. When I graduated they all wanted a job at a hot new startup. Now all the folks graduating from that program want a job at Google.

Tomorrow they'll all want a job at the Next Big Thing, whatever that is.

I have to break with the consensus a little by saying Google has an uncomfortable amount of power for my tastes - especially with the ability to mark sites as unsafe, which can route traffic away from pretty much any site they choose. That said, as far as I can tell they've handled that power well, and we've seen only honest mistakes, not abuses.

But having grown up working on a much more "free range" web, putting up that kind of fencing makes me itchy.

Add to that the document hosting tied in with email and blogging Joana mentions. TANSTAAFL goes both ways there. All those servers don't run for free, even if we don't see the charge*.

So far they've handled their power well. Yes, it's always possible for a competitor to push them off the hill.

I'm still itchy over 'em.

As much as we've seen the effective nationalization of companies lately, the ability of a company to pretty much provide a made-to-order enemies list complete with documentation of everything you ever said in email or wrote in private documents is just a wee bit unsettling. All the more when browsers are getting written to restrict access to sites marked as dubious.

Again - not being misused now, far as I can tell. But given the potential should the Feds step in and say "it's an emergency, we need your cooperation" well... I just don't trust Google's definition of "evil" to mesh up perfect with mine.

That's not a "they're an evil (gasp) CORPORATION shut them down" panic, that's a "be smart about what you say even in email, and have lots of backup points of contact with multiple providers" concern.

------------------------

* Hence I go with the "never put anything on a foreign server you're not willing to see datamined" regardless any privacy clause in the sign-up legal verbage.